Disappointment
by Screaming Faeries
Summary: Antoinette Delacour wished that she could be like her prestigious, rich father, who had founded and built Beauxbatons school, but she just couldn't follow in his footsteps. It wasn't her fault that he decided to marry a Veela. Written for Quidditch Leagues as Beater 2.


**A.N:** Written for the Quidditch Leagues, with the prompt: Year 854AD, with my Beater 1 task: Write about a school day.

Prompts used:

(word) Flood, (word) information, (restriction) No word: "said".

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><p><strong>i <strong>

Antoinette Delacour was the epitome of wealthy, virginal youth. She was beautiful; blonde and silvery, with delicate limbs and a heart-shaped face. Her father had founded Beauxbatons after seducing a wild Veela wife and impregnating her. The money that Mr Delacour made from the school was in the thousands – no, _millions_ – and Antoinette had everything that she could ever need or want. She was dressed in the finest materials, and was immediately sent to Beauxbatons when she turned eleven years old for a first class education. Back in 854AD, when Mr Delacour was the Headmaster of Beauxbatons School of Witchcraft, he only accepted students who were very, very wealthy.

She had wealth and looks aplenty, wealth thanks to her rich father, and looks thanks to her beautiful mother. But she didn't have the thing she most desperately desired.

Antoinette was born in the year 840, and she was born barren of magic. Her Veela mother didn't care, of course – pure Veela were magical creatures, but they weren't witches. Mr Delacour, however, refused to believe it. He was a pure-blood French gentleman, and he had come from a long line of pure, French-blooded fathers, all with perfect magical abilities. He raged and raged when he discovered that Antoinette couldn't charm so much as a coconut, and he poured his rage into his wife – in the sense, that he gave her many more children.

Three brothers followed Antoinette, beautiful brothers with their father's strong jaw and lip, and their mothers silvery hair and blue eyes. Mr Delacour waited and waited upon each son, but none of them produced any magical talent.

He simply couldn't comprehend this information. How was it that a man of his stature and prime masculinity couldn't create magical offspring? When Antoinette was eleven, he put a knife to his throat and ended his life, leaving his Veela wife to take over as Headmistress.

She insisted that Antoinette go to Beauxbatons, even if she wasn't capable of any magical talent. She convinced Antoinette that her magic would come to her eventually – she was just a late bloomer, that's all. So Antoinette was sent along to Beauxbatons, much to her embarrassment.

Which leads to this day. September, 854AD. The worst day of my life.

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><p><strong>ii<strong>

I hadn't been feeling right since my father died. It was too easy to remember how much of a disappointment I was to him. Too easy to recall the look of pure disgust upon his features when he realised how much he was let-down by me. I remembered being seven years old and crying myself to sleep, willing anyone who would listen in the stars above to just bless me with my magical talent so that I could make my father happen.

I wished and wished and wished for it, until I was blue in the face.

But to no avail. I was taken along to Beauxbatons with my mother and deposited outside a classroom, where all the students inside were sat around the Professor in a circle.

It was painful, so very painful. It was known to everyone within twenty minutes that I had no magical talent, when I was handed a short stick of wood and asked to try and sense what the core was. Wandlore had been around for centuries, but during this century when bodies of education were cropping up across the wizarding world, Wandlore was being taught to all the young witches and wizards.

I couldn't feel anything in the wand. It sat, cold and lifeless in my palm, whereas when other girls and boys took the stick of wood; their faces would light up. Jets of light sparked from the end.

When we were sent to our desks and told to print what we knew about Wandlore after the brief lesson, a particularly nasty looking girl was placed next to me.

Her name was Genevieve, and she had bewitching green eyes and long black hair, fastened together in a neat plait between her shoulder blades. She immediately began whispering horrible things to me.

My tears built up as Genevieve's words grew harsher and closer to my heart. I could feel my rage building, as images of my disappointed father flickered before my face. Maybe Genevieve was right? Maybe I really was a waste of time and space if I couldn't perform even the simplest of spells. I felt tears trickling down my face and smearing the ink on my writing block.

They kept falling and falling and falling. I couldn't see anymore, my eyes were just a watery blur of colours. My throat hitched and I knew I was sobbing loudly now, but I couldn't calm down. I sobbed a whole flood of tears, right until the class ended and the students trailed out to their next lessons.

I would realise later in life that to be honest, I didn't really _want _to be a witch. There had been too much pressure on me, my entire life, to be magical and perform spells. All I really wanted to do was be me - and do whatever I wanted.

So I did what any headstrong young girl would do. I left Beauxbatons and never came back.

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><p><strong>iii<strong>

The thing is; I was never destined to become a Witch. I would never follow in my fathers footsteps, and his fathers footsteps. As I grew older, I grew more and more bitter; the pain that my father left in me ate away at my soul. When I was young I believed it was my fault - my fault that I couldn't perform magic and my fault that Father ended his own life. But as I aged, slowly and gracefully, I knew the truth.

Simply put, my father should have married someone for their sparkling personality - and not their ensnaring Veela looks.


End file.
